(In response to David Brooks' "Getting kids psyched: We must confront the psychological barriers to success")
I don't think enough attention is paid to the
psychological state and trials of children. We tend to assume there are
two groups: either they're from good homes or they aren't. Either
they're psychologically healthy or they aren't. This binary approach
doesn't help the kids who are from rough homes or the kids who are
psychologically unhealthy; Tolstoy was right about unhappiness and
hardship. And it certainly doesn't help the kids in the middle. We need to acknowledge that there is a gradient: someone
can be generally psychologically healthy and going through a bout of
depression (statistics say most of us will, and with everything on their
plates it's becoming increasingly common among all children, especially
adolescents). There are kids who come from divorce who have one safe
home, one unsafe or two unsafe homes. Abused children don't always come
to school with bruises. You aren't always going to know what kids
oversee and overhear at home, or in their communities.
I especially appreciate Brooks' attention to the fact that the lifelong
effects of childhood psychological trauma cannot be solved or mitigated
by schools alone. I have long argued that while education has the power
to change individual lives the American public school system, with all
its inequalities and problems, is symptomatic of much broader social
trends. We can get high-risk kids into great schools but if their
brains haven't had proper nutrition or been exposed to a high volume and
variety of words by age 5, there is only so much that can be done. If a
child is gestated, born, and educated in generational poverty, a good
school alone cannot fix this. We need more attention to national
patterns of inequity. We need to consider the other social
institutions, codified and not, that foster the status quo of
generational poverty. We need to abolish food deserts. We need to
subsidize fruits and vegetables, not commodity corn. We need to
change how we fund education and train teachers. We need to destroy the
idea that "those who can't do, teach." We need to revisit gun control.
We need to change the restrictions placed on former prisoners so that
they have real options when they return to their communities. We need
to incentivize real, good choices for young men and women in poverty,
both rural and urban. We need to give kids real, useful sex ed so that
they can protect themselves from disease and unwanted pregnancy, so that
they can have a shot at establishing lives for themselves before they
become parents. I could go on. Each and every one of these problems is
being addressed by brilliant, passionate, innovative, creative minds.
But these are all symptoms of a larger, national problem: "across vast
stretches of America, economic, social, and family breakdowns are
producing enormous amounts of stress and unregulated behavior, which
dulls motivation, undermines self-control, and distorts lives."
I'd go one step further than Brooks, though. I say it's long since time
for the people fighting these disparate symptoms to get together in a
room and collaborate. It's long past time for real, uncomfortable
conversations about these problems. We need to do some national
soul-searching: How did we get here? How are we going to work together
to fix it? As a special ed teacher said to me today, "What is the
antecedent? Where does this behavior come from?" He thinks that with
everything kids deal with today teachers will eventually have three
degrees/certifications: subject/grade level, special ed, and
psychological counseling. I welcome such a program. We need to be able
to look at our kids and see the psychology at work. But we can't do it
alone. Eduction can do a lot but it can't fix all society's ills on
its own.
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